Girls Night (the problems of dating a superhero)
by IWantYouInMyLife
Summary: "That's why we don't invite you to girls night."


_"I'm done, Frank! Fucking Done. You hear me?" Karen screamed, glaring at the man with all her might._

_"Karen—"_

_"I feel like it's pertinent to add—"_

_"No, there's nothing to add, Murdock. I don't want to hear a single word from the both of you, am I being clear?" She threw her hands up, shaking her head. "I can't take you anywhere, for fuck's sake! Not one single place in New York where I can take you for a fucking date!"_

* * *

"Girl, you look like you need a drink," Darcy said as soon as Karen walked out the elevator, giving her sympathetic look.

Darcy didn't bother to get up from her place at the couch, though, choosing, instead, to pat the empty space on her left, in a clear signal for Karen to move her butt over there to join the others. Pepper, Jane, and Natasha were already there, nursing glasses of what looked to be margaritas — and from the look on their faces, it wasn't their first or second round, either.

"More like a whole jar of Long Island," Karen sighed, rubbing her forehead.

Jane shrugged, raising her glass in a mock toast. "That can be arranged."

"Yeah. If there's one thing this tower has plenty to offer, that's alcohol," Darcy pointed out. "The good shit, too, 'cause let me tell you, no one does this work sober — no one."

"You don't need to convince me," Karen assured, sitting down with a dramatic gesture. "Trust me, if I learned something since I met Matt, that's to take the liquor when's being offered to you."

"Preach, sister."

Pepper nodded in understanding. "What happened, after all?"

"The same usual bullshit, it's what happened," Karen complained, kicking her heels off her feet. "I just cannot take them anywhere. There's always a fight, always someone to save, always a person, eleven fucking blocks away, that needs help. And I'm not saying that I don't want them to help — I do, of course — but sometimes it's just so exhausting."

"And sometimes they won't even say anything!" Darcy added, knowing just what she meant. "They'll just get up and leave in the middle of our fucking dinner."

Pepper rolled her eyes. "The number of times Tony straight up stood me up to stay in his lab to fix some stupid robot…"

"Bruce is great," Natasha smirked, sipping her drink.

Darcy threw a pillow at the spy, unfortunately missing her target by quite a lot. "Oh shut up, Natasha!"

"What?" Natasha asked, like the bitch she was. "He is."

"We know, that's why we don't invite you to girls night," Jane grumbled.

"I feel like I should be offended."

"Well, go be offended somewhere else." Darcy made a shooing motion with her hand. "We're too busy complaining here."

"About who, this time?" Natasha asked, giving them all a pointed look. "Murdock and Castle?"

"Who? Are you kidding?" Darcy snorted, getting up to fetch more booze. "About all of them! Annoying pricks."

The girls all made different noises of agreement, settling more comfortably into the couch and chairs, getting ready for a few hours of loud complains and copious amounts of alcohol.

* * *

"Thor broke our bed for the third time," Jane suddenly said after a minute of silence, a pinched look on her face. "It's only been four months since we moved to the Tower. How's that even possible?"

"Whatever, Foster. We won't cry over your man breaking your bed with his sexual prowess."

"That's the thing!" Jane explained, sour-faced. She wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees. "It's not while we're having sex — that I could understand. No, he plays some stupid computer online game when I'm working, and he gets so worked up over it that he jumps around and breaks the bed."

"Computer game?" Pepper asked, looking confused.

Jane rolled her eyes. "I don't know. Counter-Strike or Fortnight or whatever."

"And he breaks the bed?"

'Yes!" She said, nodding her head and sounding beyond frustrated. "I'll come back from a day in the lab, and all I want is to lay down on my goddamn bed to get some sleep, but no, of course not. I told Tony to build him something sturdier; otherwise, I will kill Thor myself one of these days, and they'll be down a member."

Pepper patted her arm in consolation. "I'll get Tony to do it, sweety. Don't worry."

"I vote to just kick the guy out off your room."

"Better yet, leave for a few days and see how much time it takes him to realize you're gone."

* * *

"FRIDAY," Karen asked, tilting her head to look at the ceiling. "Can we get some music, please?"

"Any preferences?" The A.I questioned, skipping the formalities with them.

"Something calming? I don't know. Maybe a classic — that would be nice."

Darcy groaned. "No! Anything but that, please," she said, drowning the content of her glass. "If I hear just one more old song, I swear I'll explode."

"Just put some stupid girl song. A pop song, anything," Pepper ordered. "Darcy's right. I'm tired of Metallica and AC/DC — I am."

"You think that's bad? Steve and Bucky will only hear Jazz — all the time, every day. I mean, your girl likes Jazz just as much as the next one, but there's only so much saxophone that a person can take before it starts to drive her insane."

"Try waking up to Highway to Hell," Pepper murmured darkly.

Karen gasped. "He didn't!"

"Sure did," Pepper confirmed, exhaling deeply as if burdened by the weight of the world. "More than once, too."

"What the hell?"

* * *

"Are they still fighting about that?" Pepper asked, although the look on her face made it clear that she already knew the answer to her question.

"Of course it is. It's an on-going argument between them, and honestly? I'm tired of playing the mediator; I just let them go at it. I'm starting to think it's some weird kind of foreplay, to be honest," Karen admitted, reaching back to tie her hair in a low ponytail.

"I know, right?" Darcy agreed. "They are so full of crap anyway. We all know that when the time comes, Steve won't kill the assholes and Bucky will. They won't change; it's so pointless."

"Yes! Exactly! And why must I suffer for it? I'm not the one killing or not killing people, for Christ's sake. I could write a whole Ph.D. thesis on the pros and cons of killing criminals with all the arguments I've amassed since I started to date them, I swear."

"You know what the worst part is? Is that they go at it, scream, shout, disrupt the peace of my entire evening, and then they go to bed and sleep like the dead, no fucking problem at all. And I'll stay awake, with a pounding headache and still thinking about everything they said."

"Oh, that problem I don't have. If anything, I'm the opposite. The minute they start to go at it, I'll slam the bedroom door shut and go to bed," Karen shared, imparting some wisdom. "When you date The Punisher and I'm-guilty-of-everything Murdock, you learn pretty early to get sleep whenever you can."

* * *

"Just for a moment," Jane began, raising a brow. "Try to imagine how insane it is to live in a room with a hammer you cannot lift."

"Why doesn't he just leave it on the ground?" Karen asked.

"Oh, he does," Jane said, pursuing her mouth and looking overall quite done with the whole subject. "I broke my toe once."

"Ouch."

"And my nose, too."

Pepper cocked her head. "Your nose?"

"I fell face-down on the floor."

"Get a stand for it or something," Natasha suggested around a spoonful of ice-cream.

"The freaking hammer has a goddamn stand, alright?" Jane argued, opening her own tub of ice-cream with a jerky tug and stabbing the poor thing with her spoon. "Stark built one — Thor won't use it. He carries the thing everywhere and drops it everywhere as well."

From across the room, with her head inside the freezer, Darcy yelled, "Girl, get Valkerie to kick his butt for you."

"You think I haven't? Good luck trying to change the habits of a guy who's been alive for a thousand years."

Karen winced. "_Ouch_."

"Yep, that's it. Ouch."

* * *

"The blood! God, the blood!"

"It's everywhere!"

"I know, right?" Karen said, throwing her hands up in a gesture of exasperation. "And trust me, I know how to take blood stains out of clothes. I'm a woman for God's sake, but this is another level entirely. It's all of their clothes now — there's not a single one that hasn't been splattered with blood."

"Blood?" Darcy scoffed. "I liked it when it was only blood. Blood is good — I even like blood now. How about when it's some disgusting slime from some bizarre shit?"

"I had to shave Thor's hair once because the thing just wouldn't come off," Jane commented. "It was a shame — his hair is so gorgeous."

Karen shook her head. "No, I still think the blood is the worst. They come home drenched in it — like it was raining blood on the streets instead of water. I always feel like I'm about to have a heart attack, 'cause, at first, I never know if they are hurt or it's just from other people."

"Well, honey, if you are squeamish around blood, then maybe dating The Punisher wasn't such a good idea," Natasha teased, filling up her cup.

"Well, fuck you, Romanov," Karen snapped back. "I'm not squeamish — far from it. You just have no idea the amount of damage Frank can do when he's pissed off."

"I've seen the tapes."

Karen scoffed, pouring herself another glass and filling it to the top. "The tapes? Let me know when you have to wash bits of intestine from his hair. I dare you not to flinch then."

"You lose that when you've been in the field," Natasha shrugged.

"In the field?" Karen mocked, rolling her eyes. "You think a person can date Daredevil and The Punisher without getting into '_the field_'? I've gotten my hands dirty plenty of times, Natasha, cut the bullshit. Doesn't mean I'm used to it."

Natasha raised her hands in a surrender gesture. "It's not your profession, that's what I meant," she said with a meaningful look. "When you're right in the middle of things, every day, all the time, without a break, you either lose the sensibilities, or you crumble like wet paper."

"Wet paper?" Darcy questioned, frowning. "That doesn't even crumble. It makes no sense."

"Shut up, Lewis."

"No, I get it. You're right," Karen admitted, hugging her legs to her chest. "I don't think they even feel it anymore. The blood, I mean. They come home drenched in it, and it's like sweat to them, or something — they just don't notice it anymore."

"Like the wounds!" Darcy exclaimed. "They come home with a knife cut, a broken arm, a limp, I don't know, and they'll act like it's no big deal. I swear to God that once Bucky forgot he had been stabbed in the back, so he just went to bed with a huge gash in his back, still bleeding through his shirt. When I sat behind him, I almost had a heart attack."

Karen nodded, knowing precisely what Darcy was talking about. Shit, the number of times she had to force the boys to strip and let her exam them before going to bed was too damn high to admit. If it weren't for her, they would both probably be missing a few limbs by then.

"You girls ever think we should just pack our bags in the middle of the night and leave while we got the chance?" Pepper asked, after a pause.

They all looked at each other, trying to read the answer swimming in their eyes, allowing the silence to stretch for a minute before Darcy broke the moment by snorting quite loudly.

"Yup," she said wryly. "Just every fucking day of my life."

Jane nodded. "We should do it."

Karen and Natasha exchanged looks.

"You grab the money; I grab the passports?" Natasha asked, smiling.

"Shit, yeah," Karen giggled, sipping her drink. "For a little peace? I'll even get our deaths printed on every fucking newspaper in this country."

"Cheers to that, sister," Darcy said, raising her half-empty glass.

Four other glasses joined hers in the air. "Cheers!"

* * *

**Author's Note: I had this idea swimming inside my head for quite a while now. For some reason, I think it would be a whole lot of fun to imagine the girls getting trashed and talking shit about the men in their lives. After all, dating a superhero cannot be easy.**

**Xoxo**


End file.
